


BBCSH  'Shells and Shells and Yorkie Bars'

by tigersilver



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-25
Updated: 2012-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:31:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigersilver/pseuds/tigersilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Excerpted Piece, better elided.]<br/>Forgive the Author for stumbling. Better yet, run screaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	BBCSH  'Shells and Shells and Yorkie Bars'

This only keeps on building on itself, and it's clear I'm not yet near done with it. Sorry! Just follow the trail of crumbs backwards, my dears.  


  
  


** Part III: Osiris **

John Watson would never buy flowers for the flat (he’s a confirmed bachelor) but if he did it wouldn’t be red and white carnations. He doesn’t carry flowers to Sherlock’s gravesite, either. He carries unused tea bags—PG Tips and such, the usual lot from Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s—and sometimes old-fashioned honey sticks or a Yorkie Bar ( _not for girls!_ Or, sparingly, the ‘not for civvies’ ones.) 

Sherlock makes certain to press a grudging kiss on every last bullet that goes in his unwanted gun. Well, he’s craved a gun of his own for ages (and very nice it is, too) but he would rather John had the carrying of it. John knows guns; John’s accustomed. Sherlock, despite understanding, finds kickback sometimes manages to wrench his shoulder, his _playing_ shoulder.  He’s a good shot, nonetheless. The bullets fire true when he needs them and that’s a bit good.

If what happened to Sherlock when he fell—death, presumably—was a ‘Dear John’ letter of the worst sort, what John was on about after was the most mystifying series of actions ever—in a very long line of them. Sherlock, scrutinizing hijacked CCTV footage on the telly of his incredibly innocuous London bedsit, is frankly puzzled. 

He’s nearly at end of this…journey. Home, soon.

(It’s the same bedsit John had let, before they met up so fortuitously. Sherlock finds himself to be ridiculously sentimental as time goes by. Ridiculously.)

(As outfitted by Mycroft, so it’s really more a command centre for an operation that will result in the quashing of Moran. John wouldn’t recognize it as it is now. No…he would recognize the presence of gun and laptop. Eerie, is it, what’s important and what is not.)

(It’s cold and it’s bare and it’s _nothing_ like home. He’s a violin but it’s not his violin. He’s a coat, but it’s not his coat. He doesn’t dare wear _his_ coat. He has some sense, at least.) 

One last interlocking piece to burn (of the rank body of evidence Moriarty bequeathed him) and though ex-Captain Sebastian Moran is a very canny man, as Sherlock has noted previously, he is certainly no Moriarty. He gambles; he hires prostitutes; he smokes Cuban cigars: he’s careless. Careless and reckless both, shredding his own mental armour to a tattered relic over time. Moran’s hurting way down deep, now he’s headless. Rudderless, really. Especially as Sherlock (with Mycroft’s assistance) has systematically taken the legs (mixed metaphor; creepycrawlies; try ‘cogs & gears’) of the mastermind’s machine out from under him and reduced the presumed mastermind’s meticulous hand-written (how sopping sentimental of him; what a useless wanker!) post-Falls directives for his lieutenants to so much useless confetti. 

They run on and on, Sherlock’s trails. Some he pursues and some he leaves to Mycroft. Some end in emptied nests and some in desperate situations. All through he’s aware John is patiently waiting. It’s always amazing to know John’s mental eye is always on him, never deviating.

Sure, and there’s petty thugs still abounding by the bucketload and criminals for hire, gamely attempting to smuggle what doesn’t exist to be hidden nor carried, to arm third world nations no longer in the buying market (thanks, elder brother, for meddling just so), to convey illegal substances across seamlessly repelling national borders, but those are merely small fry. Mycroft, again. These underlings may be allowed to go free and return again to their little anthills of iniquity for Sherlock to deal with another time; it makes no nevermind to him. Let them. Insurance against boredom, isn’t it? It’s Moran who’s got the level bead on John and has all along, for far too many days now. One thousand and seventy one: too bleeding long. Sherlock plans to entirely erase the yawning blemish—delete, elide, vanish—and his precious Belarus-made rifle scope from existence. 

Sherlock (Mycroft) thus rents John’s old flat and hovers unseen ‘round the environs of Baker Street and St. Bart’s and the clinic Dr. Sawyer runs for the longest stretch of time ever. All his peripatetic travels have ironically returned him to this: the very beginning. It’s cyclical as Sherlock sees it now (so clearly, with the deadwood and underbrush pruned away) and yet it’s his life—the remnants of it—which remains the focus and thus always John…John, John. What Moran even thinks John Watson might do to him (in revenge? In retribution?) is immaterial. The plus side is seeing John nearly every day…though always from a distance. 

From a distance. 

John, meanwhile, has gotten hold of a EuroRail pass along with renewing his Oyster and has spent more time out of the City than not. More time out of the country, actually. Sherlock’s got an inkling of why but Mycroft doesn’t confirm it.

(Mycroft is a shit. An unctuous shit. Sherlock can’t conceive of doing this without him, nevertheless. He thanks Moriarity’s blind spot when he recalls to do so. ‘Always something’, his bloody arse!)

One Wednesday evening, John drops a knife. When he leans down and scrabbles under the kitchen table, he comes up smiling. Smiling!

(Sherlock pops into 221B often when John’s out, ensuring Moran’s not done the same and left any inconvenient ‘surprises’. He reads the scraps and post-it’s John has laying about when he does. The image of what John’s doing is developing—but slowly. He only knows he doesn’t like it. He didn’t die for this purpose. He did not.)

(Sherlock can, if he peers through his pocket glass, make out the indents of the weight of John’s gun on the particulate wood of the desk drawer. It’s been taken away and placed back again very often recently. He touches the impressions and at one point shoves his face in the empty space and trails his lips over them, tasting. There—gunpowder! And why gunpowder at all if John is safe at home and Sherlock leading them away? Excepting Sherlock’s not ‘away’ as such. Sherlock’s nearly on top of 221B, geographically.) 

(All the laces on Sherlock’s old shoes are tied neatly in the closet. All his out-of-date (now) suits and shirts are buttoned up properly, as if he might arrive home again at any moment and require them. They smell of rosemary. And lavender. Mothballs, from the not-housekeeper.)

Smell—odour. Old tea leaves in the compost bin and worn-away rubber from the marigold gloves and bleach from the shiny cracked lino and  there (just there) the scent of rosin. Someone’s been caring for his instrument. Mycroft, the meddler, of course.) 

Scent trails. 

(John’s like a bloodhound. _The_ Hound. Or a bowerbird. He’s clearly leaving 221B on a particular mission each time: to collect things. Sherlock knows that particular expression John always wears when leaving; the grimly stubborn one. He knows it far too well for his own comfort.) 

(What John returns with from his brief journeys makes no sense at all, though. A…sheet? A glove? Files long closed—transcripts and photos?) 

(The fine hand of Lestrade is obvious and John’s own initiative, both. It’s ancient history John’s compiling; it’s what Sherlock sacrificed, what he’s given up. But the blogger is silent even as he compiles, as if he’s biding his time. He’s going about whatever drives him in a piecemeal fashion. Sherlock doesn’t understand, is afraid to understand. Is afraid of his foreboding and he’s _never_ afraid.) 

(…Tarot cards, Mrs Hudson? Ouijii boards? _Really_?) 

(There’s a pattern emerging; it sends his hair rising on his nape. He vaguely recognizes all these many mementos, such as they are. Is John engaging in a bit of deduction on his own, then? Why wasn’t Sherlock warned of this?)

And all the while John makes sure to break his eggshells. He drives the bowl of his spoon through them of a morning before work. That ridiculous tuxedo-coloured cat’s moved in, at last, officially. It prowls the flat and yowls angrily at Sherlock when he visits. He rather fancies John’s named it Gladstone but the audio frequency is a bit muffled sometimes in the living room…solar sunspots? Failing wires? Sherlock must needs replace them if Mycroft doesn’t. And certainly John has been heard to loudly summon the feline menace by the fond term of ‘Wanker!’ (‘Psst, pssst, psst, here Wanker!’)  

It’s weaving together, the fabric of the universe, from whence it was briefly torn asunder. 

Moran squats like a toad over London, over John. 

All it takes is one slug, flying, but it’s…personal. 

John, Sherlock decides, should have the honours. He is military and he deserves the satisfaction of being in for the kill.  
  
John... _John_ is the gentleman, not him. Not him. 

_ A/N: TBC...and this may be not what I am searching for, amongst all these WORDS. _

  
  



End file.
